Jerpoint Abbey

On March 7, we visited Jerpoint Abbey on the first stop of our weekend stay in Kilkenny. Jerpoint Abbey was established in the 12th century in County Kilkenny and was constructed by the king of Ossory, Mac Gill Patraic. This abbey was abandoned in the wake of Henry VIII’s dissolution commission. It was a Cistercian abbey, meaning that the living style of the environment was a communal one so much of the focus of the lives of the monks living there was on isolation and their strict regiment of a prayer schedule.
On our visit to Jerpoint, we had a short tour as well as a good amount of time to explore the grounds ourselves. We were able to take notice of some of the physical characteristics of the abbey during this time. One of the main descriptions our group came up with when talking about the grounds was that the abbey had a large courtyard and high ceilings, all of this being enclosed. When walking through the abbey, we could see that the people who lived at the abbey were gifted with artistic skill. On the walls we saw faded paintings and on the pillars and tombs there were many different creative carvings. A couple of the carvings that we looked at on the pillars in particular appeared to have represented some of the deadly sins, specifically gluttony and sloth. There was only one heated room in the entire abbey, the calefactory, which the monks were only allowed to be in for one hour each day, exemplifying the lives of self-denial and self-discipline that they lived. Also, there were no settlers allowed nearby the abbey, displaying the isolated nature of the monks.
In considering the role that Jerpoint played historically in Ireland, we saw that it represented a shift to a way of Roman hierarchy in the context of monasticism, starting to replace traditional Celtic monasticism and thus contributing to the development of the Church of Ireland in the context of modern Ireland.
        As our group reflected further on our visit to Jerpoint, we all had the desire to be able to visualize somehow what the abbey really looked like when the monks were living in it. Despite the fact that all of the remnants themselves were intriguing, we felt that we wanted to understand it in its reality more. One thing that did help us visualize this to a certain extent were the details about day-to-day life that we were given during the tour, we found that this helped the place come alive for us a little bit more. Throughout this and other visits to monasteries and abbeys, we have developed a curiosity about the reasoning and the motivation behind this extreme monastic way of living that was so common during this time in Ireland.

Jerpoint remains

The courtyard at remains of Jerpoint

Part of the courtyard at Jerpoint